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Provides a synopsis of the volume, the impetus for which began with the 2005 workshop “Advancing the Equity Agenda Inside Unions and at the Bargaining Table,” sponsored by the Centre for Research on Work and Society at York University.
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Twenty-two private sector trade union locals in the manufacturing, service and technology sectors in Canada were surveyed by telephone in 2002/2003. The objective was to determine union locals' understanding of the impact globalization was having on their operations, and to identify the contextual factors affecting their responses. The data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The locals associated globalization with plant closures, reduced production, and the elimination of or transfer of jobs and equipment out of the country. Seventeen of the locals reported being affected to a moderate to high degree. Their main responses were lobbying, educating members and the public, and organizing. The important contextual factors identified included local size, industry sector, levels of support available to and accessed by the locals, and the perceived need for and ability to adapt successfully to change.
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The changing nature of the membership demographics within unions, along with declining union density and myriad other challenges, have made it mandatory for unions to change their traditional ways of doing things. In particular, because the porportion of female and minority group members within unions has grown considerably since the 1970s, equitable membership representation has become an issue of significant concern. The object of this chapter is to develop a general conceptual model of how to advance equity within unions.
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Trade unions in Canada are losing their traditional support base, and membership numbers could sink to US levels unless unions recapture their power. Unions, Equity, and the Path to Renewal brings together a distinguished group of union activists and equity scholars who trace how traditional union cultures, practices, and structures have eroded solidarity and activism and created an equity deficit in Canadian unions. Informed by a feminist vision of unions as instruments of social justice, the contributors argue that equity within unions is not simply one possible path to union renewal – it is the only way to reposition organized labour as a central institution in workers’ lives. --Publisher's description
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[S]ummarizes thirty years of effort by equity advocates to realize a feminist-inspired vision of a union movement that is inclusive and democratic, and that seeks to advance the interests of all working people, unionized or not. ...[The author] argues that the union renewal literature has not acknowledged the gendering of the labour movement, or the role that women's organizing has played in transofrming the labour movement and helping it to reposition itself in the face of neo-liberal globalization, thus assuring its future survival. --Editor's introduction
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[C]onsists of an interview conducted by [the author] with Beverley Johnson, a long-time union activist, and her daughter, Marie Clarke Walker, currently an executive vice-president with the Canadian Labour Congress. It documents the historic and ongoing struggle for equity waged by people of colour, and the continuing acute problem of racism in Canada and within unions. --Editor's introduction
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[P]resents statistics documenting the changing face of Canada's labour force, which is projected to become more feminized, more racialized, and more Aboriginal. ...[The author] warns that many of the most underprivileged workers are already turning to worker advocacy centres for help, rather than unions, because of unions' continuing failure to respond to their needs. --Editor's introduction
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[E]xamines what types of issues unions should pursue in an effort to mobilize what is, at present, a largely a complacent or indifferent union membership. ...[The author] argues convincingly that the future survival of the labour movement lies with improving the lot of the most disadvantaged. --Editor's introduction
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[E]xamines how coalition building between and across equity-seeking groups within unions contribute to union revitalization by building solidarity. [The author's] main focus is on what types of organizing structures contribute to unity in diversity, for example, by protecting the particular interests of each equity-seeking group while enabling a common equity agenda to be advanced. --Editor's introduction
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[E]xamines the implications for unions of the federal and provincial human rights legislation and the Canadian Charter of Rights [with respect to equity]. ...[The author] warns that unless unions find acceptable ways to deal with the increasingly diverse interests of their members, conflict could ensue that could remove unions' legal right to represent certain minority intersts, as well as destroy union solidarity. [The author] describes one such conflict currently moving through the courts, which arose from the negotiation of a two-tier wage clause that is allegedly discriminatory. This is a cautionary tale that highlights the link between union revitalization and equity. --Editor's introduction
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[D]raws on the [the author's] experiences in the Canadian Labour Congress and the Ontario labour movement to elaborate on the causes and consequenes of the limited progress made in advancing equity for racialized people within the labour movement. --Editor's introduction
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[The authors] link union revitalization to the presence of separate spaces where women can identity and articulate their needs, create feminist politics, and develop the will and ability to contest existing power structures within unions. They offer three examples of how union feminists in Canada, the United States, and Australia have created such spaces in unlikely places and by so doing have secured workplace rights and economic and social justice for women. --Editor's introduction
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